


I Want to Break Free

by AGirlNamedEd



Series: Hell Hall [1]
Category: Monster of the Week (Tabletop RPG)
Genre: Backstory, Gen, Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-17
Updated: 2019-08-17
Packaged: 2020-09-06 06:06:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20286634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AGirlNamedEd/pseuds/AGirlNamedEd
Summary: Izzy Crabtree is a problem child. A punk, a lesbian, a deviant. It's just easier to ship her off to a private boarding school than to actually deal with her.





	I Want to Break Free

**Author's Note:**

> This is more of a character study/establishing scene than anything. Izzy is my character from a Monster of the Week campaign affectionately nicknamed "Hell Hall." She is a rock stupid, angry lesbian who fights monsters with a skateboard and hockey stick. She would die for her friends.
> 
> As a warning, this takes place in 1989, and therefore has some period-typical homophobia. I tried to keep it fairly light since that's not something I really want to explore in my works, being a rock stupid, angry lesbian myself, but it is there. Be ye forewarned.

“Bella, Trent’s ready to go! Get downstairs _now_!”

Izzy trudged out of her bedroom, slamming the door shut behind her. Backpack over one shoulder, she stomped down the stairs as hard as she could. Was she acting like a toddler throwing a temper tantrum? Maybe. But in her opinion, which was the only one that mattered, it was _completely_ justified.

Her mother was waiting by the door, arms folded, watching her come downstairs with an annoyed and disappointed look on her face. “Bella, _really_,” she said when Izzy got to the bottom. “Where’s your uniform?” Izzy ignored her and threw her backpack on the ground with the rest of her bags. Mom sighed. “Bella. I asked you a question.”

“Sorry, I don’t know a _Bella_,” Izzy said, turning her back to put on her combat boots. She’d bought them from the army surplus store downtown, and she loved them more than any other shoes she owned. It also gave her an excuse to ignore her mother until she used her fucking name.

She could _hear_ her roll her eyes. “Isabella.”

“Nope.” She yanked her laces a little too tight. It wasn’t hard to call her Izzy when she was a kid, but now that she preferred it to anything else suddenly it was a federal fucking court case.

“_Izzy_.” It sounded like a swear word when she said it. “Where is your _uniform_.”

Izzy stood and turned to her with a shrug. “I packed it.”

“Are you _sure_ you packed it?”

“Mom.” Izzy hoisted her backpack onto her shoulder again. “I fucking packed it.”

“Don’t—you _know_ you can’t use that language in my house.”

Izzy scoffed. “What are you gonna do? Ship me off to boarding school? Oh wait.”

“We’re not—that isn’t what’s happening here.” She straightened Izzy’s collar and tried to fuss with her hair. Izzy ducked out of the way. “This is just an opportunity for you to try a different environment.”

That was bullshit mom-speak for “we just can’t deal with you so we’re shipping you off to become someone else’s problem” and they both knew it. Izzy scowled, jamming her hands into the pockets on her sweater, and said nothing. What was there to say? She couldn’t do anything about the situation. Everyone involved in the situation knew how she felt about it, and it was still happening.

The front door opened, and her brother stuck his head inside. “Hey, Iz. Ready to go?”

She levelled him with the flattest look she could manage. “Fuck off.”

“That’s a yes.” Trent grabbed her duffel bags off the floor, stumbling when they were heavier than he expected. “Geez, Iz, are you bringing your whole bedroom or what?”

She was, in fact, bringing almost everything she owned. The only things she’d left in her room were some blankets and books she didn’t care about. Izzy didn’t trust her parents not to go through her stuff and throw away shit while she was gone. She knew for a fact they’d quietly disposed of Trent’s ratty old Beatles t-shirt that didn’t fit anymore when he first left for college, but either he hadn’t noticed or he hadn’t cared. “Yeah.”

Trent seemed to take it as a joke, because he laughed and swung her bags up. “Sure, kid. Are you coming or what?”

Izzy looked back at her mom. “Well, bye.” Mom stepped towards her, arms out like she was about to try and hug her, and Izzy ducked under them and escaped out the door before she could.

Emily was outside, waiting next to the packed car. She glanced nervously between Izzy and Trent as they approached her. Trent went to jam Izzy’s bags in the trunk while Izzy stood awkwardly in front of her sister. Emily fidgeted, playing with her hair. “When are you coming home?” she asked.

Izzy flinched. “Christmas, I guess,” she said. The school was close enough to her house that she could come home for weekends if she wanted to, or if Trent was coming home from college and swung by to pick her up. But there was no fucking way she was doing that if she didn’t have to.

Emily hugged her, and Izzy let her. “I’ll miss you,” she said.

There was a lump in Izzy’s throat. “I’ll miss you too, kid.” She pushed Emily back to hold her at arms’ length. “Did Mom and Dad tell you I’m gay?”

She looked at the ground. “Yeah.”

“Yeah, I figured.” Izzy sighed. “God fucking forbid I come out to my sister on my own terms. Well, anyway, stay in school, don’t do anything I wouldn’t, and punch Gary McCreery in the dick for me if you think you can get away with it.”

Emily giggled. “Okay. Stay out of trouble.”

Izzy put a hand to her chest, giving her sister a mock affronted look. “Stay _out_ of trouble? Who do you take me for?”

Trent ruined the moment, like he usually did, by choosing that moment to scoop Emily up in a bone-crushing hug. “See you, Em! Be good!”

Izzy slunk to the passenger door, tossing her bag in the backseat after pulling out her Walkman. It was going to be a long trip with just her and Trent, even if it was only two hours.

Trent tapped her on the shoulder after about ten minutes on the road. She shifted her headphones and he held up a cassette. “Will you take off your headphones and talk to me if we put on Queen?”

She weighed her options briefly before nodding and taking off her headphones. If nothing else, it’d help make her batteries last longer. She had a huge pack of them stuffed in a pocket of one of her duffel bags, but it was better safe than sorry.

Trent barely let Freddie Mercury get two lines into “You’re My Best Friend” before he opened his big dumb mouth. “So. You’re going to boarding school.”

Izzy ignored him and continued staring out the window.

He tried again. “Being away from home isn’t so bad. You get used to it after a while.”

She needed to head him off at the pass. “That’s not what I’m pissed about and you know it.” Trent shut his mouth. Izzy sat up and looked over at him. “They told you why they’re sending me off, right?”

“No.”

“Don’t fucking lie to me.” Izzy leaned back in her seat again. “You’re their fucking golden boy. Straight As, prom king, football scholarship to law school, the whole bit. There’s no way they wouldn’t tell you. They’ve been trying to pit you and Em against me from jump.”

“If you’d just—” Trent stopped himself, mouth set in a hard line.

“If I’d just what, huh? _Conformed_? Been a good little Christian girl like they wanted? Had two fucking brain cells to rub together so I didn’t need three different tutors for math? No, tell me,” she snapped when he started to open his mouth again. “You fucking tell me, how the _fuck_ should I have avoided my parents, who are supposed to love their kids unconditionally according to God or some shit, how I could’ve kept them from deciding I’m too much of a fucking burden to deal with and dumping me at some private school for someone else to deal with? Huh? What’s your expert opinion, Golden Boy?”

“I mean, the hair would be a big start.”

Izzy rubbed her fingers over the side of her head. She’d ‘borrowed’ Dad’s electric razor and shaved the sides of her head, leaving just a couple inches on top that she dyed purple. Her parents and teachers had been livid. Her friends on the hockey team had begged her to do theirs next. “They wouldn’t take me to get a haircut. They wanted me to keep it long.”

“And the vandalism?”

She didn’t have a snappy answer for that one. Spray painting lesbian slogans and symbols all over the school immediately after being forcibly outed was probably not her best idea if she didn’t want to get caught. “I had my reasons,” she said after a minute.

Trent sighed. They were quiet for a while, all through the rest of the song and into the next. “Mom said she didn’t know what to do about you,” he finally admitted. Izzy rolled her eyes. “She said you were testing her, all the time. That every time you did anything it felt like it was to slight her.”

“It wasn’t personal.” Not until lately, anyway. Izzy was someone that the system was designed to fail—a girl, a lesbian, an idiot. So she’d lashed out at people who upheld that broken system. Teachers, parents, authority figures in general. Mom had been incredibly against Izzy’s rejection of femininity and compulsory heterosexuality. She’d also been the one to lose her mind the most when they found out Izzy was gay. So maybe it’d gotten personal later, but it hadn’t started that way.

Besides, it wasn’t Izzy’s fault that gender norms sucked, or that flannel was comfortable, or that short hair felt right, or that punk music was good, or that girls were hot. Her mom had her way of being a woman, and Izzy had hers. Her mom’s problems were hers, and it wasn’t fair to push them onto Izzy the way that she did.

“So, it’s—is it true?” Trent asked after a while. “Are you a queer?”

There was no point lying about it. “I’m a lesbian, yeah.”

Neither of them said anything for a while. Then Trent spoke up again. “Did you have anyone—you know, a girlfriend? At school?”

Izzy pressed further back into the seat. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“So you did then.” Fuck. “What was her name?”

Her name was Victoria, and she was the most popular cheerleader in school. Half the guys in their year had crushes on her, and she basically had her pick of guys, but it was Izzy who she cornered after a game, it was Izzy who she pinned to the wall and whispered to about keeping a secret, it was Izzy who she kissed like her life depended on it. They met at the back of the library to hold hands and whisper to each other, under the bleachers at pep rallies to make out, at each others’ houses after practise to just hang around and be together and pretend they were normal teenagers for a few hours. Izzy hated having long hair, but she loved playing with Victoria’s, putting tiny braids in it while they talked and tangling her fingers in it when they kissed. She liked that Victoria was so bold and cool, and she helped her with her homework, and she hated that they couldn’t be as open as the straight couples at school.

They burned bright for all of a month before the gym teacher found out and told their parents. Izzy didn’t see Victoria for a week. When Victoria did come back to school, it was to clean out her locker. She’d been so quiet and small and scared, and she wouldn’t even look at Izzy.

Izzy never saw her again.

“I _said_ I don’t want to talk about it.”

They didn’t talk for the rest of the trip. When _A Night at the Opera_ was over, Trent put on a Beatles album, and Izzy put on her headphones.


End file.
